Monasteries?

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When Cappadocians cut vast living spaces into the conelike formations of the local volcanic tufa around the turn of the first millennium, they created vestibules, halls, kitchens, storage areas, stables, churches and burial chapels, all hollowed out of the soft rock and arranged around courtyards, whose exteriors were often carved with elaborate facades.

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For two seasons, I have surveyed and documented about 15 of the 20 complexes in the Peristrema Valley, in western Cappadocia (see map of Cappadocia and vicinity). The 10-mile-long valley sits among the foothills of Hasan Dag, the southernmost of the now-dormant volcanic mountains that created the region’s distorted landscape. The Byzantine settlements in the valley, dating to the 10th and 11th centuries,^a stretch along a winding river that flows north through the modern Turkish villages of Ihlara, Belisirma, Yaprakhisar and Selime. My work has been concentrated in the northern part of the valley, near Selime, where the Byzantine settlements are most numerous. Selime also boasts one of the largest and most architecturally sophisticated rock-cut complexes in all of Cappadocia—the Selime Kale, a huge labyrinth of stables, courtyards, halls and a church cut into a rock outcropping (see plan of Selime Kale).

My survey compels me to question the traditional interpretation of the region: Were Cappadocia’s rock-cut complexes, especially those in the Peristrema Valley, primarily monastic settlements, or is there more to this intriguing, negative architecture?

The astounding number of churches in Cappadocia, with their elaborately painted frescoes of religious scenes, has prompted scholars since the 19th century to conclude that this region was mainly settled by monks who sought refuge from the world by digging into the rock.¹ This explanation seemed confirmed by the Cappadocian origins of Basil the Great (c. 330–379), whose Rule of St. Basil formed the foundation of Orthodox monasticism—even though Basil lived some 500 years before the most intensive period of settlement.

Debate over the identification of the Cappadocian settlements continues, as Robert Ousterhout notes in his accompanying article (“The Cave-Dwellers”). But now the evidence is shifting—away from the theory that Byzantine Cappadocia was predominantly monastic.² For one, many Cappadocian complexes lack features that are typically associated with Byzantine monasteries. In monasteries, for example, monks generally dine communally in a room called a refectory; the Cappadocian version of the refectory consists of a room with a rock-cut table surrounded by a bench, often with a special niche at one end for the abbot. But refectories have been found primarily in the vicinity of Göreme, in eastern Cappadocia. 031Not a single refectory has been found in the Peristrema Valley. If this settlement was monastic, why are there no refectories?

Also, in monasteries monks live in cells—small cubicles, roughly equal in shape and size, where each monk retires in isolation at the end of the day. In the Peristrema Valley settlements, however, there are no monastic cells. So where did the monks reside?

There is another problem with the monastic theory: In the Peristrema Valley complexes, the churches are not given sufficient emphasis. If the complexes were monastic, we would expect the churches to occupy a prominent position in the center of the courtyard. But in the Cappadocian settlements, vestibules and halls generally have pride of place in the middle of the complex, with the church shunted off to one side. Some of the more extensive complexes in the Peristrema Valley, moreover, have very small chapels; others do not have churches or chapels attached to them at all.³

Although there were monastic settlements in Cappadocia, it is highly unlikely that the region was originally, or even primarily, settled by monks fleeing persecution or seeking the otherworldliness of the Cappadocian landscape. The monastic settlements probably arose in Cappadocia, as elsewhere, as outgrowths of other, perhaps 032earlier, settlements. Who did settle here, in this isolated, grotesquely beautiful terrain? And why?

Cappadocia’s strategic location in the southeastern part of the Byzantine Empire helps supply the answer. From the seventh to ninth centuries, Cappadocia was the main staging ground for raids between the Byzantine Empire and the Arab emirates of northern Syria. By the ninth century, the empire had pushed its Arab enemies beyond the Taurus mountains southeast of Cappadocia and retaken most of northern Syria. This period of expansion lasted through the 11th century. By the 12th century the empire had contracted once again under the Seljuks, one of a series of nomadic tribes that invaded Byzantium’s eastern frontier and took control of Asia Minor.

The main settlement of the Peristrema Valley arose after the period of Arab-Byzantine conflict, when Cappadocia was essentially a military border zone. Byzantine armies marched from Constantinople to Koloneia (modern Aksaray), about 15 033miles northwest of the mouth of the Peristrema Valley at Selime; there they gathered supplies and recruited additional troops. From Koloneia, the armies proceeded south, joined up with other Byzantine forces and then marched through the Cilician gates, the only major pass through the Taurus mountains. After crossing the mountains, the Byzantine armies raided Tarsus, the Arab stronghold nearest to Cappadocia.

Once secured by the Byzantine Empire in the ninth century, Cappadocia was settled by various groups: military officials, land magnates, aristocrats, working families and monks. Contemporaneous historians report that the area consisted of “troglodyte villages and small towns dug into the rock.”⁴ These sources also refer to an emerging Cappadocian elite, whose extensive land holdings provided the ability to garner military support strong enough at times to usurp imperial authority in Constantinople.⁵ It is likely that this elite, with strong military connections, built the more elaborate rock-cut complexes in the Peristrema Valley; these settlements strengthened the vulnerable southeast region of the Byzantine Empire.

Additional evidence confirms the military nature of the Cappadocian settlements, at least in the Peristrema Valley. Selime has been identified as Wadi Salamun, described by Arab geographers during the period of Arab-Byzantine warfare as a strategic military site within the Byzantine Empire.⁶ From the cliff top of Selime, called Selime Kale, one can see the fortified hilltops of Sivrihisar and Akhisar (the words kale and hisar mean “fort” in both Arabic and Turkish). All three fortifications are located along the same military route. This strategic location, the provision for shelter in the valley’s soft tufa and the availability of water from the river made the Peristrema Valley an ideal place for settlement during the Byzantine period.

The paintings in Cappadocia’s churches contain more than 100 inscriptions and donor images referring to the churches’ patrons. Two donors in the Peristrema Valley have military titles as well as imperial dignities: protospatharios (first sword-bearer), spatharokandidatos (sword-bearer), tourmarch (leader of a tourma, or military province) and taxiarch (leader of a taxis, or troop division). The active presence of these generals in Cappadocia also confirms the military nature of the settlement.

So where did these magnates live? Dramatically cut into a rock outcropping almost 300 feet above ground level, the Selime Kale (see plan of Selime Kale) is the largest, most sophisticated and intricately planned complex at Selime. Upon arrival, horses would have been left in rock-cut stables at the bottom of the complex, near the base of the cliff, where granaries are also found. A tunnel leads up through the rock into the main part of the complex, which consists of two spacious courtyards, a kitchen, two rectangular halls (each about 50 feet long, one with an upper gallery), several two-story rooms and a basilica church.

The entrance tunnel opens into the first courtyard. On the left is the complex’s 034kitchen. On the right, across from the kitchen, is the first great hall of the Selime Kale (see photos of the great hall of the Selime Kale). A large, rectangular room with a flat ceiling, the hall contains, at ground level, six barrel-vaulted niches, three carved into each of its long sides. At the end of the hall, opposite the entrance, is another barrel-vaulted niche flanked by two tunnels; the tunnels climb to the upper galleries, which consist of arcades with arched openings that surround the hall on three sides. From the second-story galleries, one can observe activities throughout the spacious hall.

This hall is unique in Middle Byzantine architecture. Surviving contemporaneous structures at other Byzantine sites (mostly churches) are built of brick and stone. From those churches we know that rock-cut features in Cappadocia imitate the design of built architecture but rarely possess structural qualities. That is, if a column in a rock-cut space is removed, the structure will not collapse. In imitating built architecture, Cappadocia’s artisans not only understood the engineering principles required for hollowing a durable space out of rock, but they were also extremely fluent in the design, layout and decoration of ordinary Byzantine masonry architecture. This hall fills a great void in our knowledge of Byzantine buildings; it is a very rare example of an elaborately designed non-ecclesiastical structure.

What went on in this galleried hall? The proximity of the kitchen may indicate that the hall was used for dining. The six barrel-vaulted niches on the ground 035floor could have been used for storing portable furniture. Another clue may lie in one of the upper galleries. The gallery to the right is very open, with passages to a number of storage rooms in back. But the left-hand gallery is the most private area in the entire complex; there is only one approach to it, and the arched openings are protected by chest-high barriers, which close off the arcade. The private nature of this gallery may indicate that it was used by women, or perhaps by the establishment’s servants.⁷

A tunnel at the end of the hall leads to the Selime Kale’s second great hall, which is entered at midpoint. Rather than having a flat ceiling, this room is barrel- vaulted and divided into two sections by an arch and a step on the floor. Upon entering the hall, one passes under the arch to the left and steps up to an elevated section of the hall; on both sides, just below the springing of the vault, are registers of engaged colonnettes supporting blind (merely decorative) arcades. At the end of the hall, a wide doorway opens into a square room flanked on three sides by barrel-vaulted niches; a cross is carved in relief on the room’s flat ceiling. This room may have been a sleeping chamber. A short tunnel leads from one of the room’s barrel-vaulted niches into a small room with a pit excavated vertically down into the rock. This square pit was a secret passageway leading to other, yet unexplored areas of Selime’s largest rock outcropping.

The lower part of the hall, to the south of the entrance tunnel, leads out into the Selime Kale’s second courtyard. The courtyard is surrounded by several rock-cut spaces, most of which were probably used as secondary living quarters, including two areas possibly used for bathing. The most impressive of these spaces is the complex’s church—one of the largest and most elegant rock-cut churches in all of Cappadocia.⁸

From the courtyard, one enters the western end of the church, in keeping with Byzantine Orthodox stipulation of orienting a church’s sanctuary toward the east. This basilica-style church has three barrel-vaulted aisles separated by two arcades, which are supported by alternating columns (round pillars) and piers (square pillars). The central aisle is painted with scenes of the Virgin and Child; medallion images of saints decorate the arcades’ spandrels (triangular spaces between the arches) and the arches’ soffits (the undersides of the arches). A number of the architectural features—the capitals of the columns, for example—are outlined with diamond or spade patterns, adding an elegant, aristocratic touch.

Just outside the church, near its entrance, is a grave. Inscribed above the grave is a funerary poem composed in Byzantine-style verse with each line containing exactly 12 syllables. The only legible part of the poem reads, “Do not be blinded by the appetite for wealth; the love of money has destroyed many, for this flesh is clay.” An admonition against the evils of excessive wealth, this poem would hardly have been addressed to a community of monks. It seems far more likely that the tombstone belonged to the prosperous owners of the complex, who had the inscription carved as a gentle warning to their descendants.

One of the church’s frescoes (see photo of Virgin fresco from Selime Kale) painted on the western wall just above the entrance, may help us identify the owners of the Selime Kale complex. In the center of the painting, the Virgin Mary stretches out her arms to bless two men, who are flanked by at least three figures on the left and two on the right. The figures most likely belong to a single family with the heads of the household standing closest to the Virgin.⁹

This is clearly a donor image. In return for the blessing, the figure on the left presents the Virgin with a model of the church, which he presumably built and dedicated to her (a cycle of paintings depicting the Virgin’s life appears in the 038vault of the basilica’s nave). The two figures at the Virgin’s side wear square caps on their heads and brocaded robes decorated with roundels and foliage patterns. These costumes, typical of Byzantine high fashion, indicate aristocratic status.

We may even be able to identify the main figures depicted in the fresco—as two brothers, the Georgian princes David Magistros and Bagrat, Duke of Dukes. These two men are depicted in similar gesture, pose and dress in a sculpted panel in a church at Oski, in southern Georgia near the Black Sea. The princes dedicated this Georgian church in 963, roughly contemporaneous with the settlement at Selime.

It may at first seem unusual that prominent political figures from Georgia, a territory much to the north and east of Cappadocia, should dedicate a church in the Peristrema Valley. However, in the late 10th and 11th centuries, Byzantine rulers parceled out imperial lands, especially on the eastern frontier, to powerful families in order to maintain control over land newly acquired from the Arabs. The relocation of ethnic groups within the empire was also designed to keep rebellious local leaders loyal to Byzantium. Georgian and Armenian families were key players in this complex mosaic of people moving throughout Asia Minor in the Middle Byzantine period.

There is additional evidence connecting Georgians to the Selime Kale complex. Various architectural details of the Selime Kale church—such as the alternating piers and columns, and the engaged colonnettes carved into the piers’ corners—resemble details found in tenth-century churches in both Georgia and Armenia. Moreover, David Magistros and his brother Bagrat were given land and titles by the Byzantine emperors Basil II and Constantine VIII in return for helping to suppress one particularly prominent, rebellious magnate family from Cappadocia, the Skleroi. (At a later date, the tables turned and the Georgian brothers allied themselves against the empire with another Cappadocian family of eastern origins, the Phokades.) Both Basil II and Constantine VIII are mentioned in a dedicatory inscription in the apse of the Direkli Kilise church in Belisirma, just a few miles south of Selime. It is possible that the Georgian family received the concession at Selime as a reward for its service to the empire.

Whoever the donors depicted in the church fresco are, it does not seem likely 039that they actually lived at the Selime Kale complex. They probably visited only periodically, if at all, to check on the upkeep of their lands. Or perhaps members of their extended family, who are also depicted in the donor image, were assigned to manage and protect the lands around Selime. We do not know for sure, but this donor image, in addition to features of the complex itself, rules out the possibility that the Selime Kale was a monastic structure. Its location high up on the cliff suggests that it was built as a lookout post along the military route.

Nor are the other, less richly endowed establishments at Selime monastic complexes. Although a number of these complexes do have churches occupying a central position,^b they all lack precisely those elements that make up a monastic structure: refectories and monks’ cells. The examples at Selime were probably manor houses, built to give shelter to a transient population concerned with tilling the soil and defending the frontier.

One complex, number 7 in my survey (see photo of Selime 7), is cut into several cones. This complex has two courtyards, with a church placed prominently at the center. Around the first courtyard are a stable, a series of utilitarian or storage areas, a kitchen and several halls. The facade of the domed, four-column, cross-in-square church is decorated with three blind horseshoe-shaped niches, framed individually and then framed as a whole (above). Inside this finely carved church is a rock-cut icon screen, which divides the part of the church reserved for worshipers from that reserved for the clergy.

Selime 7’s second courtyard preserves a handsome facade with an open portico on the upper floor. A room to the right and above the portico contains dozens of pigeon cotes cut into the rock (above). The pigeon cotes were used for harvesting guano, a major source of fertilizer in Cappadocian agriculture. It has been commonly assumed that pigeon cotes were a post-Byzantine feature of the Cappadocian 040landscape. But these pigeon holes at Selime 7 are contemporaneous with the Byzantine settlement in the Peristrema Valley, as demonstrated by the architectural unity of the complex.

Down the hill from the second courtyard, two funerary chapels are hollowed out of an isolated cone. The chapels are small barrel-vaulted halls with sanctuaries at the east end and graves cut into the floor. In the past such chapels located high up in isolated cones were often interpreted as the residences of stylites (Christian ascetics who escaped from the world by living on pillars or mountain peaks). This was in keeping with the identification of the settlement as monastic. But these funerary chapels are clearly associated with the living quarters and spaces belonging to Selime 7—close enough for easy access, yet not too close.

Another structure at Selime, a church called the Dervis Akin Kilise, is excavated in an isolated cone situated between two complexes. This domed, four-column, cross-in-square church with a two-tiered facade has provisions for burials in the narthex (the entrance hall to the church) and 041painted panels in both the narthex and the church proper. In a niche in the narthex, above a small grave, is a fresco depicting the Virgin and Child along with a third, female, figure. The Virgin cradles the infant Jesus in her left arm; her right hand rests on the head of the smaller female figure, who is likely the person buried in the narthex and who may also be one of the donors of the church. This fresco of a female donor in secular, nonmonastic dress is additional evidence that the church did not necessarily belong to a monastic foundation. On the wall across from the donor image is another 12-syllable funerary poem (see second sidebar to this article). As with the previous poem at the Selime Kale, this one calls on individuals to prepare for death but does not carry any overtly monastic sentiment.

Inside, painted on the church’s piers and walls, are frescoes depicting archangels, military saints and the Dormition of the Virgin. A man in lay dress kneels at the feet of St. Demetrius. This man may be the husband of the woman depicted in the narthex.

Once we discard the traditional idea that Byzantine Cappadocia was primarily settled by monks, a new picture emerges. The Selime settlement, it now appears, was largely an agricultural community that supported both a permanent and a transient population. Among those who lived there year round were farmers, workers and monks. The permanent population would have cultivated the land around the valley’s wide riverbed, growing such crops as barley and fruit. In the summers, Byzantine settlers may have migrated to the plateau above the river valley in order to tend flocks and harvest crops, much as the valley’s inhabitants do today.

But the Byzantine settlement owed its existence mainly to a transient population of transplanted aristocratic families and contingents of soldiers. Here in the Selime complexes, the Byzantine army could store provisions over the winter months, making it possible to set out on the summer campaigns fully stocked. It is our lasting good fortune that in these settlements, really only elaborate way-stations, spectacular monuments from the Byzantine period should survive.